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Who’s Killing the Trees of Valley Glen?

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

The volunteers who planted some gangly saplings along Victory Boulevard saw them as a symbol of how things are supposed to work in the new L.A.: A local advisory group identified a way to make its neighborhood a little better, took its idea to local government and government pitched in.

Inexplicably, however, someone has been sabotaging Valley Glen’s tree-planting project in the dusty medians between Babcock and Goodland avenues. Despite organized efforts to keep watch over the 70 newly planted saplings, vandals have cut the tops off more than 30 of them in three separate incidents since May.

Police have no idea who is responsible, or what could possibly be motivating them.

Calling the vandalism “an affront to the whole community,” Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer on Tuesday secured the approval of a $5,000 reward for information on the attackers.

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“These trees are a public asset, planted with the hard work of dedicated neighbors in collaboration with the city,” Feuer said in a statement Tuesday.

They were also the first big project for the 4-year-old Valley Glen Community Council, a local group considered a model for the new neighborhood councils being created across Los Angeles under the new city charter.

“That’s why this is very important,” said Michael Randall, co-chairman of the Valley Glen Community Council. “It’s more than just the trees. Our success should encourage other communities in the Valley to also improve themselves--but we can’t let this criminal act thwart that.”

After the Community Council secured $25,000 in city and other funds to improve the medians--which, Randall said, had been the largest unimproved city properties in the area--volunteers and city workers planted 35 trees one day in late April, only to see 10 of them cut in half the next day, Feuer field deputy Benjamin Fiss said. Astounded neighbors kept watch over the remaining trees during the night, and a few weeks later, 35 more trees were planted, with the damaged trees replaced.

But in November, eight more trees were cut and on Dec. 5, 14 others were destroyed. The trunks of the trees, mostly holly leaf oaks about 6 feet tall, are cut at about waist height, leaving the tops dangling pathetically from the saplings’ metal support rods.

Valley Glen Neighborhood Assn. President Carlos Ferreyra said he believes the destruction is the work of a nearby resident: teenage vandals, he said, wouldn’t work so methodically. “They’re not broken or torn, they’re cut in half,” he said. “All we know is it’s definitely a deliberate act.”

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Like Ferreyra, resident Ernesto Terranova said he can’t begin to fathom why someone would go to the trouble. “This is crazy,” said Terranova, 48. “When I see it, I want to cry.”

Ferreyra said bringing a little more foliage to this rather barren but highly visible thoroughfare is important in the long run to Valley Glen, which has been fighting to assert its individuality and improve its image over the last few years.

Planting trees is the kind of aesthetic improvement, he said, that will help attract businesses like the Starbucks that just opened a few blocks down Victory, rather than liquor stores and check-cashing operations.

“That’s why we’re concerned,” Fiss said. “Right now [Valley Glen’s] turnaround could go either way. Its success depends on projects like this.”

Anyone with information on the vandalism is asked to contact LAPD detectives at (818) 623-4085.

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